AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You must tell no one—please, Lizzy. I am sworn to another, an odious widowed countess, but there must be a way out of the arrangement. I will find a way. I must have you, Lizzy. You are enchanting.”
More giggling, some whispering, the sound of someone departing, and then Miss Charming’s voice singing to herself, “Ha ha-ha ha ha-ha,” before she wandered away.
Jane rested her forehead against the bookshelf and breathed out a very slow laugh.
Well, she thought, that proposal should be about as good a tonic to her fantasy as any.
Ah well. One gentleman down, two to go. The game was afoot.
Boyfriend #8
Bobby Winkle, AGE TWENTY-THREE
Theirs was a relationship that began as friends and slowly transformed, allure building like static electricity between their bodies. They dated for six months during that between-undergrad-and-grad-school, no-career-yet tricky time. Neither of their parents made any fuss (he was black, she was white), and they just got along so great, defying the hoot and holler of culture clash. He left for an internship in Guatemala, a step toward his future career in international affairs. They both cried at the airport.
He returned six months later and didn’t call. Last year, Jane heard that Bobby (“Robert” now) was running for Congress. At a recent polling, he wasn’t doing so hot in the thirty-something jilted female demographic.
days 9–10
WHEN THE MEN ENTERED THE drawing room before dinner, Miss Charming, who had been quietly slumped in her chair, perked up and blushed, coy and self-conscious. Jane watched it play out—Miss Charming’s need for acknowledgment of what had happened in the library, Colonel Andrew’s stolen half smiles, Miss Heartwright’s unaware melancholy. Strangely, Mr. Nobley (was he Henry Jenkins?) seemed in good spirits. For him. At least, he came into the room with almost a smile and kept something of it around his mouth all evening.
Jane grinned for Lizzy Charming through dinner. It was clear that forgoing the car and Florence was paying off. Then sometime around dessert, Jane felt a tick bite of jealousy. She scratched it away. It flared again, though this time it morphed into self-pity, but of the low-key, ladylike variety. The problem was that nagging, life-long question—What was the matter with her? Was she that unattractive? S
he’d never been really in love without having her heart mashed. And now, because she wasn’t their typical client, would she be denied even fake love?
No. There were still two gentlemen left, and Miss Heartwright couldn’t have them both.
“No more whist, I beg you,” Aunt Saffronia said after dinner. “Let us have some music.”
“Indeed,” said Captain East. “I believe, Miss Erstwhile, that you promised me a song.”
Jane was quite certain that she had never promised any such thing, but it seemed a fitting remark to make, and so Jane rose and made her graceful way to the piano.
“If you insist, Colonel Andrews, but I must beg you forgive me at the same time. And you too, Mr. Nobley, as I know you are particular to music played well and no doubt a harsh critic when a piece is ill executed.”
“I believe,” said Mr. Nobley, “that I have never been witness to a young lady about to play without her excusing her skill beforehand, only to perform perfectly thereafter. The excuse is no doubt intended as a prelude that sets up the song for deeper enjoyment.”
“Then I pray I do not disappoint.”
She smiled expressly at Captain East, who sat forward, forearms resting on knees, eager. With professional suavity, Jane arranged her skirt, spread out the music, poised her fingers, and then with one hand played the black keys, singing along with the notes, “Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her, put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.”
She rose and curtsied to the room.
Captain East smiled broadly. Mr. Nobley coughed. (Laughed?) Jane sat back on the lounge and picked up her discarded volume of sixteenth-century poetry.
“That was . . .” said Aunt Saffronia to the silence.
“Well, I hope the weather’s clear tomorrow,” Miss Charming said in her brassiest accent. “How I’ve longed for a game of croquet, what-what.”
THEY PLAYED CROQUET THE NEXT morning.
“Won’t you show me how to use your mallet against the balls, Colonel Andrews?” asked Miss Charming, her eyebrows raised so high they twitched.
Colonel Andrews had trouble unplasticizing his smile.
Captain East chatted away the discomfort, his working-boy build meets gentleman grace working for him every inch. Not that Jane was looking at every inch, except when his back was turned. He kept the conversation on the weather, but did it in a very beguiling manner. To Jane’s mind, clouds had never seemed so sexy.
As the game progressed, Andrews and Charming took the lead with professional zeal, followed by Heartwright and Nobley, an impressive pairing. Lingering in the rear, Erstwhile and East talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk. The worse they played, the more Jane felt inebriated on bad sports and her partner’s undulating laugh. Captain East looked like he could play pro football, but he held the mallet in his hand as though being asked to eat steak with chopsticks, which Jane somehow found hilarious. He hammed it up for her benefit and made it very easy to laugh.
